


In Equilibrium

by poetatertot



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Post-Canon, Space Vigilantes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 23:01:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetatertot/pseuds/poetatertot
Summary: There is one thing of which Keith can always be certain. Regardless of whatever happens—day in, day out, days between where none of them can close their eyes for longer than a second—he knows, whatever the date, the law must be followed.Or, the adventures of three paladins post-canon. Just because the war is over, does not mean all is won.





	In Equilibrium

**Author's Note:**

  * For [happinessfordeeppeople (Aura0190)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aura0190/gifts).



> For Aura.

 

 

**I. Fire in the Sky**

 

There is one thing of which Keith can always be certain. Regardless of whatever happens—day in, day out, days between where none of them can close their eyes for longer than a second—he knows, whatever the date, the law must be followed.

Law One: The universe always leans towards chaos.

The sky on Minerva IX, small satellite moon of the greater Salyx, is nothing but fire at this point. He stumbles his way under a smoking overhang that once was a hoverbike, kneeling in dust redder than his bodysuit, damp with black rain that isn’t rain at all, but mechanical slick from falling projectiles. The atmosphere here tastes of iron and copper, blood and metal, and he’s never hated anything more. He chokes as much air as he can into battered lungs and takes stock of his conditions.

If everything was still going to plan, then Lance should have gotten to the hovel by now. A quick glance at the flaming horizon confirms this can’t be true; if Lance was deep underground, plundering the hidden stores of malchite, then who’s flying his ship overhead?

“Idiot,” he snarls. It isn’t loud enough to be picked up over their intercom but he hopes Lance somehow knows it anyway. All he had to do was follow Shiro’s instructions. That’s all they ever had to do if they wanted a quick, clean dispatch.

But Keith had never worked clean, and through years of teamwork—rubbing shoulders and sharing meals, holding shoulders when there’s nobody left to turn to—Lance had picked up the habit as well. _We’re a mess,_ he thinks grimly. _Shiro should have known better._

 _He_ should have known better. And now it was all going to shit.

“Minervans aren’t a happy bunch, are they?” The intercom crackles like a live wire, bent hayward after a run-in with four guards had smashed part of Keith’s helmet into crumbling metal shards. His skull was still protected, but now he effectively had a glittering, sparking target on the side of his head. Still, through the heavy static, Keith makes out low laughter. “Who woulda thought?”

“Would _you_ smile and let your robbers in?” Shiro chides, crackling through. He sounds righteously irritated, growling low enough in his throat to set all the hair up on Keith’s arms. Lance was in deep shit. “That’s the whole point of being _fast_.”

“Not that you’d know anything about it,” Keith mutters. Through the wrecked bike’s pipes he can see streaks of blue and purple weaving the sky into patchwork, threading cool tones through a swath of fire big enough to burn retinas and blister skin. Lance may be fast but he’s no Keith, no matter how hard he tries to keep up. He has his own quirks that make him special.

 _Quirks like super weaponry._ Even as he watches, the tiny blip of blue that is Lance ejects a glimmering streak of ice long enough to spear three unlucky jets, freezing engines and deadweighting wings on impact. All it takes is one wrong turn here, a slick maneuver there, and Lance has every enemy in a short radius frozen over and blown sky-high.

He’s an undeniable asset no matter how awnry he gets with directions.

 _My turn, then._ Keith groans internally. If Lance wasn’t going to make it, then it was up to him to thread the needle and take the prize.

But first he had to get to the treasury.

The remains of his air battle litter the terrain like fallen stars that smoke with color even in their death. Whatever compounds exist in the dirt turn ground fire blue and green, giving off the peculiar image of blooming ferns and bushrows in open desert. The heat makes his skin slick with sweat that drips down his temples and leaks into his eyes; he jams one fist under the adjustable visor to rub at one eye, blinking his vision clear.

Even if nobody’s tried to get out of the fallen jets, the remaining guard for Minerva IX’s treasury have bolstered themselves on the north face. From where he’s crouched he can count at least a dozen bodies swarming the lookout terrace, writhing with scaly arms and guns he knows eject lazer beams hot enough to slice his limbs free from his torso in a single shot.

Easy.

The smoke on the ground effectively turns the landscape into a two-tone painting of green and red, blinding the guard just as it blankets his form zig-zagging between downed bodies. Two right angles here, one curved slide to make it from that wrecked fighter to the metal plating shed from a battleship — he flies across the open plains faster than his human legs would have ever taken him, muscles burning from the late exertion. It’s been over a half-hour since they broke through Minerva IX’s gravity; his body, Galra-hardwired to survive conditions that would kill a lesser being, is beginning to flag despite his best efforts. He focuses his energy on churning earth underfoot, leaning at an impossible angle to cut forward through smoke, and _runs._

The Minervans don’t even see him coming. All it takes is one conveniently-placed underbar for him to swing his body backwards over the edge of the terrace and take out one guard’s eye with his bootheel. Before the others have a chance to react he’s already drawn his blade and ripped through the meat of two more, severing spine and ripping sinew like a knife through hot butter. The rest fall like stacked playing chips in one, two, three graceful motions.

“I’m going under,” he announces, stepping over the last body. “Try to keep it clear, would you? _Lance?_ ”

“Is that a jab?” Lance gripes. “If you have a problem with how I do things, then why don’t _you_ —”  
  
“Be back in ten dobashes,” Shiro says. “We’ll be waiting.”

It’s all the acknowledgement Keith needs. He cracks open the door with a solid kick and jumps into the abyss.

 

 

**II. Internal Reflection**

 

Falling into each other’s space had never been the original intention.

After Voltron’s coalition had defeated Zarkon at the seat of his throne, the universe slowly began to right itself on its own. A thousand years is an inconceivable stretch of time—one beyond even any Galra’s comprehension — but within the universe there are always beings who are older. If there was ever any need for them to step forward and right the turned earth, it was prime time to make an appearance.

As the leader of the new era, Allura became busy with hundreds of years of work overnight. The works of intergalactic politics was never Keith’s forte—never _any_ of their strengths except for maybe Shiro—and he left the first chance he could. His part in saving the world was over.

Or so he thought.

The fire of revolution can never be put out overnight. Keith stoked the flames until they swamped body and brain alike, consuming him with a blind drive that nearly killed him on innumerous occasions. Even as his body matured and then matured _again_ after a quintessence exposure awakened sleeping DNA, the flames within were insatiable.

He saved the universe, but it wasn’t enough to save himself.

Returning back to regular life became impossible. Keith set himself up in a shack on planet Rherba because it reminded him of the desert of his youth; he had planned, upon nailing together floorboards and sanded walls, to find calm in himself for the rest of his life.

He tossed and turned in that empty bed for exactly three days before the rising smoke of the nearby town sent him flying out of his sheets. His knives weren’t even hidden in the furniture yet.

No thoughts flew wayward from his singular drive; he started up the engine on his hoverbike and made way for the smoking buildings before he could even think to pretend he’d turned a new leaf.

A mummer’s farce. Dead trees can’t grow new leaves, and Keith’s youth was deader than the ashes that caked Daibazaal’s surface.

He can still see those oil fires in the back of his mind, hot red flames licking at a cold, empty sky. There were hardly enough residents left alive to scream by the time he made it to town square. Nothing but a couple cowering in the dust, begging for forgiveness before death.

“Give it up. Zarkon is dead,” he snarled, spitting bile into the dirt. The arsonists smiled back with all four rows of razor-sharp teeth.

“This isn’t _about_ Zarkon.”  
  
Being outnumbered in combat is a constant state of being for Keith. He hadn’t thought anything of taking them all on — never mind that he was barely clothed, and one criminal appeared to carry a projectile-launching technick. He’s _Keith_ , the Red Paladin. Who was going to stop him?

If there’s any sort of God, he speculates he must have a great sense of humor.

“Think fast, mullet!”

His body recognized Lance’s tenor before his brain had time to process anything beyond the blur of brown skin and blue armor shooting past his left. He fell into a graceful kneel and swept out one leg to fell an attacker, but the action was a second too late. A steaming hole parted directly through the alien’s right eye, opening up to the back of his skull.

They dispatched the arsonists in several quick, terse movements. Keith may be a lover of combat but he’d never become accustomed to war; even those men, twisted and depraved as they were, still added to the body count he’d personally collected. He kicked them over so he didn’t have to see their empty eyes.

“I had it under control,” he hissed, but Lance was already moving past him to inspect the damage. His shoulders sagged at the sight of everything lost; even when their prior chains had been broken, enormous weights still fell upon their shoulders. Their duty was never relinquished.

“It certainly doesn’t look like it,” Lance murmured softly.

They never spoke of the home Keith tried to make for himself. Lance gave him half a varga to fly back home and gather all that he held dear. He made it back in less than ten dobashes with a single pack under his arm.

And then, together, they made for the stars.

 

 

**III. The Missing Piece**

 

No lights brighten the cavernous space behind the treasury trapdoor. Keith walks circular, empty hallways scaled with shiny, black stone—some sort of lava deposit he recognizes from another system, complete with tiny, whisper-thin etchings. He steps close to one wall and peers closer, but the knife-carvings hold no discernable relevance. Runes of a language he’ll never know.

The pitch-black is whole enough that it threatens to swallow his sight, fraying edges of his peripheral into charcoal dust that sets every hair on his body standing. Even with his own heightened senses he can feel shadows sucking at his skin, peeling away the surety he’s learned to armor himself with. He’s never been one to be afraid of the dark, but—

But.

“Shiro,” he murmurs, hugging along one inner bend. “How close to the Empire was Salyx?”

“Close enough,” Lance mutters grimly. “What’s the sitch, catman?”

Keith whips around another corner with his pistol at the ready—and there’s nobody. The whole bottom floor is just full of empty space and these carvings. Where is the motherload they were promised?

“It’s all empty,” he growls, twitching too-long hair out of his eyes. His ears shudder at the prickling sensation of mussed hair sticking into them, but there’s nothing to be done about it. “Nothing’s here.”

“There must be some kind of mistake,” Shiro says. The low note in his voice chills Keith’s bones; he can envision the older man bent over in his pilot seat, frantically going through intel files with a furrow in his brow. “We were supposed to have the element of surprise. Who could have warned them?”

Carefully, Keith brings one hand up to trace the wall etchings. The scars are infinitesimally thin, wrought by blades too delicate to ever bear arms in an intergalactic war. Signs of a civilization preceding terror?

He brings his hand away and the etchings begin to glow an electric blue, bright enough to make his eyes water. Lacerations spread faster than his eyes can catch, splintering to fill every etching with light and color, threading outwards from his touch to lacet walls and walls, the floor, the ceiling in every direction.

And then it begins.

The ache blooms first in his jaw and sets every nerve ending alight. He’s lit up from the inside, sparks flying behind his eyes, the sour-bitter-sweet of something cloying and ugly sliming down his throat. The burn of ozone weighing in his lungs.

He doesn’t even feel his knees hit the floor. Desperate, shaking fingers claw at the tender flesh of his neck, claws tearing away at layers of kevlar and metal plating to shred the soft flesh underneath. There are bugs under his skin, crawling, _buzzing_ —

“Keith!” A hoarse voice crackles to life behind his left ear. There’s so much white noise in his skull, crackling through live wires, he can barely hear anything beyond the hum inside his mind. He paws at his closed visor, the line where he knows he can pop the guard open to scratch at his eyes. “ _Keith!”_

His hands are wet. How did they get wet? He can feel bubbling heat blooming under his fingernails, painting the streamlined angles of his suits in dark, hot splashes, but it’s all negligible compared to the way his body cooks itself from the inside out _,_ his intestines coming to life inside his body to wriggle free from his flesh—

He’s on his hands and knees, staring into that blue floor, eyes streaming, throat clenching tight—

“We have a nine-oh-nine zeta, I repeat, a nine-oh-nine—”  
  
“Stay with me Keith, come _on_ —”  
  
_Wrong_ , he thinks dimly. His cheek presses against the hot shell of his helmet as his muscles totally seize, paralyzing him. His whole brain is becoming a slurry of white static, intangible, incoherent. Keith stares up into the face of a Minervan with purple eyes, gleaming blue on every open patch of his skin. _We were wrong._

The Minervans hadn’t needed a warning. They were already prepared.

 

 

**IV. Clandestine**

The first few months after liberation were.. blurry. When Keith tries to reminisce, he often finds there isn’t much to savor; in the purgatory between heavenly victory and the hellfire of nomadism, all there is, is being.

If Lance’s ship can barely harbor a single body, then the housing of two forces it to nearly burst at its seams. He never clarifies where he found it—only flings a shrug over one shoulder, shoving aside any notion of thievery in favor of empty jokes or diversions. Regardless of where the ship comes from, though, it’s clear that it’s prior inhabitants were closer than Lance and Keith can even pronounce themselves to be. There’s one room behind the cockpit. One bed.

“I wasn’t expecting guests,” Lance mumbled after the first few hours passed. They both bore exhaustion in varying forms: Keith with his hair snarled and matted, his limbs trembling from unused adrenaline and insomnia, undereye circles bruising creamy skin; Lance’s skin gleaming with mild oil slick, his sharp jaw blurred by the unnatural presence of five-o’clock shadow he tried so hard to keep at bay back on the castleship.

“It’s fine,” Keith muttered. He only had one bag with him when he left Rherba; the parcel was just small enough to fit in an overhead cargo compartment, large enough to bear his whole life in a single pocket. As long as he can find a good planet with cheap housing, anywhere was acceptable for drop-off. He’ll never forget the look Lance gave him when he repeated the words aloud.

“It’s been years,” Lance whispered. The vast oblivion of space stretched in all directions beyond their front window, billions of twinkling lights reduced to hyperspeed smears in an instant. Keith remembers tearing his gaze from the hollowness in Lance’s eyes to stare outward and finding that all the glass did was reflect their expressions. There was nowhere to turn where he _wasn’t_ looking at Lance, not in that hovel. “It’s been years and this is still how you want to be? Isn’t it exhausting?”

Their complicated past was no secret among the coalition. Keith remembers those fragments of time much better: the clarity in shared venom, valor, and then, when tragedy and communion tied their hands, values. Companionship is difficult when your comrades’ lives are forfeit to revolution. What was Keith willing to love, only to have it violently torn from his heart? It was safer to become stone again, so he built the wall around his heart and promised himself he wouldn’t make the same mistakes as before.

And yet, in the dead of night, when all they had to lean on was each other—

When he feared the worst and knelt at Lance’s side, saline tears streaking filth behind his visor, whispering fragility to a body he was so sure was lost to him—

_Don’t leave me. I need you._

Lance always gave him pains over never remembering their first bonding moment, but Keith had a million moments locked away that the Cuban boy would never recall. He believed it to be better that way.

“You’re wrong,” he snapped, yanking himself free of the co-pilot controls. “You don’t know _anything._ ”

He had been so sure. The aftermath was the perfect opportunity to steal himself away and lock every gaping wound, physical and otherwise, into a miniscule box nobody could open. He left Pidge and Hunk in the mechanick wards, Shiro in the main hall with Allura and her political entourage. He left Lance in the observatory, where he was sure the ambiguity between them would be lost to space.

But he never calculated for someone wanting to find him. He had been so sure he could escape with all his bearings and found, upon liftoff, that he only had half of them. The other half was with..

Keith swallowed around the heavy lump in his throat. “I’m taking your bed. Join me if you need to, but I don’t care. Goodnight.”  
  
When he slid the connecting door shut, he found the light of the pilot monitors still glowed through the peek window. He lay in a cot that bore an all-too-familiar musk and tried not to breathe too deeply, but found that even the bare traces of Lance were enough to drag him into a deep, fitful slumber.

 

Keith had never woken to another man in his bed before then—not in the context that he had always privately wished for in the castleship, where the eternal hum of machinery droned into his noisy headspace. He had grown used to the stiffness in bending around a pillow, to wrapping arms and legs around it to simulate another body.

But when he cracked open his eyes after indeterminate hours and saw _brown_ —

When he sucked in a soft breath and tasted Lance’s exhalations, felt the line of his body pressing warm where calloused, gangly arms reached to cradle his head against a broad chest—

His fingers clenched unbidden into the soft cotton of Lance’s shirt, drawing up fabric and pressing it under his fingernails. The lump reappeared with startling force in his throat, strangling him when he tried to breathe carefully. He didn’t dare move but closed his eyes again to savor everything.

Lance’s heart beat at a slow, even meter. Keith refused to acknowledge wet eyelashes and instead chose to focus on the low, husky strain of Lance’s vocal chords as he snored gently; if he was careful enough, he could even match his own breaths with Lance’s, imagine that their heartbeats were syncopating into one steady rhythm.

One calloused hand slowly slid up Keith’s spine, fingertips grazing each nodule carefully until a wide, long-fingered hand rested in his hair. Lance’s head turned slowly, nose gently pressing to the crown of Keith’s sweaty, unruly locks. His snoring cut off suddenly as he swallowed, throat bobbing close enough that Keith could hear the slide of muscles flexing.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispered to the open vee of Lance’s shirt. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, his mouth pressing into a thin line. “I can’t..”  
  
“Shh.” Steady fingers combed through Keith’s hair, detangling tiny snarls with careful, easy precision. “I won’t.”  
  
The universe was saved, but were they? What’s left for the savior after he’s done his job? Keith didn’t know; he never truly believed he would make it long enough to find out.

He supposed, cheek pressed to Lance’s warm skin, that they would just have to find out together.

 

 

**V. Resolution in Reunion**

 

Shiro was, for all intents and purposes, Keith’s first love.

There were old photos lost to a planet they once called home, letters recycled for thought of simply being trash—traces of who they were back before the Kerberos mission, when Keith was still making top marks and Shiro’s hair shone solid black. Tiny fragments of their innocence, lost to a universe with no feeling for their union.

Keith was stupid. He hadn’t thought to gather mementos until he was already gone, thrown out into the desert wasteland to fend for himself—but then, he’d also thought that returning was an impossibility. He believed, as everyone else did, that what was lost to space would never return.

But why couldn’t he let go?

A single news headline was all it took to throw away years of building an iron fortress around his heart. The steel melded over his soul was shredded away in an instant, revealing soft meat underneath to open air. He bled nonstop for months in open desert, his life’s force pouring through frantic hands to splatter on the ground and evaporate away with the rising sun. He was exhausted to the point of near-death—driven only by frantic visions and innate madness of a body too used to fighting to quit overnight.

He bled for a year before the light in the sky called him home.

Their journey through the universe frayed on threads of an old familiarity; they were both simultaneously who they had been and strangers to one another. Revolution upon revolution was spent circling each other like twin stars, ever revolving and discerning who the other was. And what Keith saw, he wanted desperately to keep.

In love and war there can be no room for ambiguity. In the passing years of war effort and trauma, near-death and near-defeat, things such as uncertainty fell to the wayside. There was no space in Keith’s heart for a half-filled glass, no space for words half-spoken in the dead of night.

Even if those words were declarations of love.

In taking to the skies alone he intended to sever the umbilical cord that tied them together. It wasn’t that he had stopped loving, but that there simply couldn’t be any room for that weakness between them. It was a blessing granted on both of their parts; Keith was doing them both a _favor._

He had been so sure they would never meet again, because how could the universe grant miracles twice?

“There’s an enemy ship coming up behind us,” Lance said, flicking on the overhead autopilot switches. “Do you think we need to fully suit up?” Ejection was a very real issue in that ship; all it would have taken was a stray aim to blast out the faulty engine. They would have seconds to escape if bad luck befell them—and bad luck was certainly coming in spades those days.

“Hold on,” Keith muttered, leaning into the stick. “I’m going to try and out-maneuver them.”

“What do you mean, _out-maneuver—”_

The ship blasted into fourth mach before he could finish his sentence, clicking his jaw shut hard enough to bite into his tongue. While Lance did his best to stay deep in his seat, Keith throttled the pilot controls like a madman at an arcade. If the enemy ship was as big as it appeared to be then they would lose it in the oncoming asteroid field.

“I-incoming transmission,” Lance choked, muscles stricken into a single pose. “Yellow flag radio _._ ”

“Receive it,” he commanded, veering at a ninety degree angle up the back of a huge crystalline rock. His heart was pumping fast enough in his chest to nearly fly free, muscles charged with a deep-seated spark that he’d chased from the cradle.

The radio transmission sparked alive above their heads in the corner of the window, where interference was less likely to end lives through distraction. It wasn’t enough. Keith steered hard over the tops of two careening asteroids and caught the faintest glimpse of white and black, of angled eyes and a strong, square chin, and nearly slammed their ship into the side of a third asteroid he didn’t look out for.

“This is Nu-Altea seven nine. You are under arrest for sixteen records of larceny in the Pyla system—”  
  
“ _Shiro,_ ” Lance breathed. His knuckles had gone white around the armrests of his chair, blue eyes blown wide. “Keith, it’s—”  
  
But he knew. _Oh_ , he knew. He would know that voice anywhere even if he couldn’t see the familiar scars lacerating his skin, the dark glitter of those eyes up close.

They slam directly into the side of an oncoming projectile. Keith sees white, red, black and then, nothing at all.

 

Voices lurked at the end of a long, dark tunnel. He was so far from the opening that he couldn’t see the light at the end, couldn’t take in any of the warmth promised on the other side. He floated in emptiness and became part of it, and in letting his soul fly free, he was one with shrapnel spiraling into the hungry eye of a black hole, lost to time.

_“Clear.”_

There is no feasible way to describe the physical sensation of one’s soul suturing itself to flesh again beyond sheer, undeniable, agonizing clarity. Darkness did not lift in the face of oncoming hellfire but rose higher, spiting a sudden pulse that rides every cell to near apoptosis, splintering bone and frying nerve endings in a single, pulsating throb of being. Black faded into swathes of crimson, and Keith found himself smothered in cotton and suffocated in heat so debilitating that all he could do was _burn._

And then, out of the magmatic misery, a timbre cool as the open pools of Earth.

“..won’t leave him, not after—”  
  
“He’ll be… when— wakes, promise—”

“ _No._ ” Hints of something musky forcing his nostrils to prickle under heavy spicy-sweet scent. A miracle he could smell at all; his head (because yes, he did still have one, he affirmed) was rattling with so many smells that he wanted to rip off his face. “I can’t.”  
  
“Shiro,” the first voice snapped again. Keith recognized that bell-like tone even as the name escaped him. His brain continued to cook over open range, even as his hearing strung words together to decode later. “You’re being unreasonable. He needs to go under—”  
  
“Wait.” A third voice, low and solemn. The accent tickled Keith’s eardrums, lilting letters and rolled consonants basting against the inner turmoil his limbs rattle with. “We’ll give you thirty tics while we prep. Will that do?”

The rest of the conversation bleeds away into flowing red streams of volcanic matter that torch the moment they hit nerve pathways. Keith burns and burns, insides charring black and crumbling to ash, but he’s tethered somehow to this plane, this place that he’s sure is _not_ heaven, or whatever awaits after death.

Lips cold as ice press to one temple, searing a contrasting brand into the flesh there. Keith doesn’t know what breathing is beyond paltry, staccato attempts at sipping oxygen, but the sudden intake on contact makes his chest _ache_ marrow-deep, even underneath layers of simmering anguish.

“..can’t believe you would…”

“..after all we’ve been through..”  
  
He recognizes that tone. He knows what face _he’s_ making better than any of his own expressions, because when you agonize over the last image of your lover departing for the universe, what else can you memorize but the furrow in their brow, the fluttering of inky eyelashes?

 _I’m sorry. I’m sorry._ If he had a throat to speak with he would scream. _God, I’m so, so sorry._

_I changed my mind._

_Forgive me._

_Stay._

Cold lips push to his skin and stay there, whispering words they’ve never dared release into open air. Close enough, soft enough, that he’s barely sure he heard them at all—but he knows better than to second-guess Shiro.

He knows better than to second-guess a declaration of love.

And then he knows nothing at all.

 

 

**VI. Sudden Clarity**

 

_Sunlight glimmers through palm trees, spangling soft, creamy carpets with golden paint. A warm breeze curls through the open windows to ruffle his hair and brush against his lips; it tastes fresh and alive with the vibrancy of summer. Real, earthly summer._

_His footsteps are masked by the fluffy rugs adorning the floor, allowing him to slip into the living room with barely a whisper. Every window is open to allow the outside freshness to make itself at home in the walls, across the table, into the folds of the couch._

_A couch where they lay._

_He comes up behind them as quietly as he dares. It’s clear, based on how Shiro’s flopped ungainly, that he was here first; Lance sprawls across his torso with all the determination a slumbering man can have, gangly limbs akimbo over armrests too small to contain their mass. His lips part to let a soft snore escape into Shiro’s shirt. Shiro sighs in slumber but doesn’t move. His brow, ever wrinkled by exhaustion and the weight of the universe, is finally smooth._

_Keith sucks in a soft breath and tastes coconut and pineapple—flavors he hasn’t savored since they made for the heavens, all those years ago._

_But how can he taste Earth when they’ve never—_

_Oh._ A dream. I’m dreaming.

_The disappointment with this realization is so utterly debilitating that it crushes him on impact, caving in delicate ribs and smashing matter to oblivion. Tears prickle at the corners of his eyes but he refuses to let them fall. Even if it is a dream, there is no space for agony here. They’re finally safe if only for a little while. He won’t cry._

God, _but it’s so hard not to. As he watches, Lance shifts to tuck himself better into Shiro’s armpit; his chin, ever pointy, digs enough into the larger man’s bicep to force his movement, one arm curling to wrap around Lance’s middle. Their faces are close enough that Lance’s hair stirs with every one of Shiro’s exhales, softly fluttering to match the wind’s gentle touch._

_And then Shiro opens his eyes._

_They stare at one another for one long, peaceful moment. Shiro’s lips curve so sweetly at the sight of him, and Keith’s heart_ aches. _As he watches, Shiro extends his other arm weakly to reach for him._

 _“Come lay down,” he whispers, voice husky with slumber. Every hair on Keith’s arms stands on end. His chest tugs inside his ribs, body aching to tuck himself where he knows he’ll be safe. “Keith, babe. Come on.”_  
_  
But this is wrong. A beautiful dream is still only a dream, and Keith is needed elsewhere. He doesn’t know how, or why, but the urge tugs at his brain with insistent jerks and straining tugs. There is still so much he has to do._

_“I can’t,” he croaks. His eyes burn with unshed tears, blurring Shiro’s gentle smile. “I can’t..”_

_“Yes you can,” Shiro laughs. “Just come lay down. Lance won’t mind.”_

_Lance cracks open one azure eye to fix on Keith; his eyes are bright enough to match the open sky itself. And then he’s smiling too, white teeth flashing against dark skin._

_“What are you waiting for?”_

_He stares at the two of them longingly, basking in the sun’s warm glow. He can see where he would fit on Shiro’s other side, his back to the couch cushions the way Shiro knows he likes it. He swallows painfully around the lump in his throat._

_“I’m sorry.” He blinks as hard as he can but they’re falling, falling from his eyelashes—gentle, crystalline tears that bead and break on soft cotton cushions. “I have to go.”_

_He sucks in a sharp breath and leans back, focusing on that throbbing point in the back of his head,_ narrowing in on white-hot heat unfurling behind his eyelids—

“He’s waking up.”  
  
A sharp snarl, and then a low hiss like bubbling, boiling water. “Wake him up _faster._ He needs to be conscious for this.”

His eyes snap open milliseconds before the contact happens, just enough to see blinding blue light and hear soft skittering talons behind him, and then. _And then._

Pain explodes behind his eyes in a fiery point of hot lava, turning his insides to molten mush. He curls in on himself with a silent groan, legs tucking into his torso out of sheer animal instinct. He’s nothing but a spider folding its limbs before it dies—because that _is_ what’s happening here.

He’s dying.

Or rather, he’s starting to. His body feels thoroughly cooked from the inside out, every limb charred from bone to epidermis. He tries to run his tongue across his lips and tastes his own blood in his mouth, choking him until he slurs and spits onto the ground. Warm, bubbling saline leaks from the corner of his mouth and stains the skin there.

It takes him a moment to realize that the lights are blinding him because his helmet is gone. His cheek presses to a cold floor so blue that he sheds tears freely. His hair, sweaty and also smelling of burning, clings to his sticky skin in flimsy tendrils.

Against the glimmering wall scratches stands a Minervan larger and uglier than any of its brethren. Keith squints into its glowing, purple eyes, and it smiles with scaly, torn lips.

“Finally,” it slithers. “You’re awake, paladin.”

_Paladin._

Keith swallows glass and summons enough air from compressed lungs to wheeze. “I.. don’t know.. what you’re talking about.” He hasn’t heard that name applied to himself in years; it’s a part of him, yes, but a fragment sloughed off in another era, when his skin wasn’t so thick and he didn’t bear trauma like a sweltering coat. ‘Paladin’ invokes images of victory and blazing metal, of roaring animals in the face of destruction. After years of Robin Hood tactics across the universe all Keith is, is exhausted.

“Don’t play stupid with me,” it garbles, blue scales winking. “You may have shed your armor but you’re still _him._ I’d know your ugly muzzle anywhere.”  
  
If there’s a grudge held here, Keith can’t place it. He’s made countless enemies in the past couple years of fighting, enough to crowd himself into tight corners too many times over. He’s never been one for remembering names or faces; if there’s something this Minervan wants, it’ll have to speak for itself.

“I’ve never—” He coughs hard, spitting blood. “Never.. done anything to your kind. What do you want?”

The Minervan sneers, lip curling back to expose blackened, scarred gums. “As if you don’t know.”

At this point there are a million things Keith could be put on the stake for. He bares sharpened fangs and sneers, though the muscles tugging in his neck make him want to scream. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

Purple eyes expand inside of the Minervan’s skull and for a second all Keith can do is scream. His blood temperature is steadily rising, already beyond what would have boiled a human inside out, and he knows it will only take a few more minutes of torture before he’s dead. Deep underground, disconnected from the telecoms and the circling ships of his lovers, there’s nobody to rescue him.

In the midst of mind-numbing madness, a fleeting thought whispers across the whitescape of his brain.

_Better me than them._

“Five bases of stalgyx production,” the Minervan snarls. “Two thousand nodules of praxum technicks. And now this _._ ” Froth bubbles from black lips; the blue spots on the Minervans back wink furiously like raging fireflies. “You lot have been a pain in our side for _half a decapheeb._ ”

 _Stalgyx production._ The underground operatives for pseudo-quintessence had been a collective thorn in Nu-Altea’s side since the fall of Zarkon’s Empire. Though on-the-table funding for it had ceased, there were still plenty of black markets hammering out the cores of defenseless moons and planets, ready to sell the firepower and associated mass-weaponry to the highest bidders. It was the shit that could bring down the coalition if they turned a blind eye, but accusing whole races of slavery and illegal resource exploitation never went well.

It’s a good thing, then, that Allura unknowingly had a band of paladin-turned-vigilantes careening across space for her.

“The Salyx system has kept this malchite treasury for _eons_ ,” the Minervan seethes. “I won’t have you worms ruining our economy just for your own righteousness. This ends _now_.”

It raises two of its glowing arms to the ceiling and the wall etchings glow ever brighter, hot enough that Keith can feel their residual warmth against his blistered skin—and then he can’t feel anything at all.

Far away through the haze someone is screaming at a volume that would flay skin clear from muscle. Distant, Keith recognizes that it must be him.

 _"Fi_ _l_ _t_ _hy half-breed!_ ” The Minervan screeches. _“Beg for your life! I want to see you cry before I cook you in your own hide, you disgusting shrapnel of worthless—”_

Keith’s vision blurs and shudders violently. The etchings on the walls are swimming, flickering and slithering together in staccato motions of bright, dark, bright, dark—

 _No._ He blinks painfully slow, eyelids scraping over dry, exposed irises. The room is _shaking._

Black shrapnel explodes outwards in all directions from the ceiling. The etchings on the walls gleam blue-white once before going out completely—or they’ve merely been eclipsed by the sudden exposure of two suns baring down overhead, combined with enough searchlights to set the interior of a small planet alight. Keith closes his eyes in an attempt to protect himself. The world is expanding, impossibly hot and _bright,_ orange dust falling from the sky to cling to his blood and sweat in a thick, powdery layer.

Screeching metal splinters what’s left of his eardrums to smithereens. He sucks in quick, shallow breaths and keeps his face pressed into the ground to protect his face, all while the world crumbles away just beyond his prone form.

When the world finally stops moving enough for him to peek out from under his arm, all the breath locked up in his chest breaks free.

A craft has crash-landed at the crumbling edge of the crater, its doors already flung wide open to let Shiro spill out into the open. From this far away Keith can’t see his expression, but he recognizes the square stance of his shoulders and the forceful movement of hulking muscle and sinew. Shiro is an unstoppable force—and he’s making a beeline straight for the two of them.

The Minervan isn’t an idiot. It takes one look at Shiro flying down and turns tail, scales flickering feebly underneath a thick layer of moondust.

 _“Stop,”_ Shiro snarls. He raises one arm and a streak of ice shoots past his left shoulder, nailing the alien to the floor. _“Surrender._ ”

A lesser man might have been clumsy enough to impale the Minervan on the spot; Lance’s jetstream misses the alien’s torso by mere inches, lodging a solid javelin of ice through one arm that’s long enough to pin it standing up. It opens its scaley maw and screams.

He’s still staring at that writhing, twisting scaley body when a larger shadow falls over him. Armored knees cut across his vision and a metal arm reaches to gently push him onto his back. Keith squints up through blinding light as the visor pulls back and exposes Shiro’s face.

“Keith,” he chokes.

Whatever damage he bears, it can’t be good; Shiro’s eyes raze over every inch of his body, pupils widening just enough to send a chill down his spine. He already knew he was a goner, but he hadn’t been prepared for everything to end like _this._

“I’m.. sorry,” he whispers. His voice is barely a whistle above the cacophony of moving machinery and screaming. The other Minervans left, while still conscious, are struggling to dig their way out of the rubble. “Shiro..”  
  
“Stop talking,” Shiro chokes. His eyes are impossibly bright. A single tear cuts through the sweat on his skin, sluicing to drop onto Keith’s shoulder. “Just— just hold on, we’ll get you out of here—”

The sky above Shiro’s head is brilliant, glowing full with twin illumination. Keith stares past the top of his head into the open flames of the sky. It’s so bright and warm, he could fall into it forever.

“Keith.” Shiro’s panting in his ear, arms carefully cradling his body. One hand slides along his jaw, tilting Keith’s head to force him to look at him. “Stay with me. Come on.”

_Stay with me._

“I’m sorry..” There’s a weight in his chest that’s strangling him, seizing burned lungs and seared muscles, clenching tight around his heart. He can feel the organ beating so fast in his chest but it isn’t enough. He tries to breathe faster, to keep up, but the world is beginning to swim. It’s not enough. It’s never enough. “Shiro..”

There isn’t enough moisture left in his body to cry. His eyes ache and burn at the ducts, and he blinks away orange dust. Everything hurts.

Shiro’s voice is beginning to distance itself, echoing from far away. “Stay with me. Keith, stay with me.”  
  
Life is so cruel. Here he’s been, fighting and fighting to have the chance to prove he’s enough—that he’s _worth_ something to somebody, even if he himself doesn’t believe it. _If I try hard enough then I might be worth it. If I work hard enough then you’ll have to stay._

He’s an idiot. Working has never been enough. The universe has torn everything he’s ever had from his flesh, ripped it clean and refused to suture the wound closed. There’s no such thing as fate, no such thing as destiny. The universe takes and takes because that’s all it knows how to do.

_Law One: The universe always leans towards chaos._

“Stay with me—”

 _I can’t,_ he wants to scream. The hot ache in his chest eclipses the agony of his failing organs, searing open eyes and open wounds that have never had the chance to fully heal. _I can’t._

His eyes fall shut without his permission, taking the warm glow away. He’s beyond feeling, beyond any physical sensation at all. His heart slows. He breathes, barely a whisper, his thoughts fleeting into darkness.

And then, in the oncoming nothing, a single stray thread:

_Thank you for staying until the end._

 

 

**VII. Landing Satellites**

 

Careful hands, collected pictures.

They’re scattered all across the floor—wayward snapshots of a life led beyond Earth’s surface. Tiny, blurry spatters of color here, a too-close shot of someone’s eyelashes there. The spackled, prismatic surfaces of crystalline moons.

He’s only allowed to take one back with him, they say. Just one. But how can he pick a single photograph out of millions?

He digs and digs through layers of glossy print, furious enough to nearly wrinkle several in his urgency. Long, low-lit hallways. The open scape of a desert. A rumpled grey-and-orange uniform thrown over an office chair. The sun.

He’s nearly dug to the floorboards when he finds it—a close-up shot that initially appears to be nothing more than vague impressions of shadowy bodyscapes. It looks to be nothing, but he knows the memory instantly.

_Hands grazing lips. Lips grazing shoulders. The soft, warm slide of scar tissue under callouses._

He plucks the image carefully and presses it close to his chest. It’s special, but is it the one he wants?

There’s another one lying nearby. The shot is taken from underneath a chin, looking up to a brown face that’s tilted away in slumber.

_Soft breathing. Warm breaths. There’s barely any light, but he doesn’t need to see to know he’s there._

He takes that one too.

But one, one. There’s only space for one photograph when he leaves, only one he can take away from the mess on the floor. How can he choose between the two?

He fumbles through hundreds more photos, trying to find a compromise. There are shots of other people, other things; he recognizes each in turn as passing sensations flickering the way lights do when driving down a highway. _Glasses. Husky laughter. The bright, twinkling blue of her eyes._ One by one he shifts through them all, determined to find the perfect shot.

And—there. Stuck to the back of another photograph. He frames it in careful, loving hands, admiring the quiet landscape of what’s been immortalized beyond time.

_A bed too small to fit all three of them. Long fingers, broad fingers, criss-crossing over angled hipbones to fit him in tightly. The moon glows bright enough to capture the tips of one’s dark hair, the sweet slope of another’s jawline. A soft chorus of goodnights and I love you’s, sung just loud enough to harmonize in three._

This one. He’ll take this one.

He stands, picking his way through the jagged mess, and nudges enough out of the doorway to crack it open. Golden light spills through and through, illuminating the dark shadows of that room he only had to himself.

He stares into the sun and offers the single photo. _Here is all that I have—the most precious memory to me._

Enough. For once, it is enough.

 

 

**VIII. Synchrony**

 

The world is cold.

His muscles are too stiff to move much; try as he might, he can barely get his fingers to twitch from his sides. He sucks in a single breath, icy and deep, and lets it go to swirl around his face.

He’s been here before.

The moment he recognizes this there’s the faintest of _swish_ noises—a mechanism unlocking, clicking to unhatch him from the egg he slept within. His body falls forward into immediate warmth, cold air sliding past his cheeks, limbs in free-fall—

“Got you,” someone whispers. Hot hands curl around his biceps, pressing him up to a warm, broad chest. He breathes in again and can practically taste the musky aroma of someone else’s skin on his tongue. “I’ve got you.”

“Keith?” Another voice chimes in. “You’re awake now, right?”

Eyelids slowly flutter open. The world is much dimmer than what he remembers; between the soft cotton at his cheek and the sublit floor tiles, he can tell there’s no sunshine wherever they are. The conditioned air and low, technical hum speaks of open space travel.

But how?

“Where am I?” He croaks, winching at the chafe of his vocal chords. He coughs and tries again a little louder. “Space?”

“A Nu-Altean satellite ship.” Shiro—because that is who’s holding him, he realizes—adjusts his grip so Keith can rest his cheek on his collarbone and look out. Lance hovers right at his shoulder with blue eyes big enough to swallow Keith’s whole heart. The pinch around his mouth and his eyebags speak volumes of what their waiting time must have been like. “The first to arrive when we radioed an emergency.”

Lance’s mouth twists at the word _emergency._ The line between his eyebrows is beginning to become permanent, Keith notices, and even as they stare at one another he can see how the muscles in his forehead pinch and strain. With slow, tentative fingers, he reaches out to smooth his brow. Lance’s eyes glimmer immediately on contact.

“You scared us to death,” he chastises, but there’s no heat behind it. Hands reach out to run through Keith’s hair and comb it behind one ear. “Don’t do that ever again, you hear me?” His voice cracks miserably.

An empty request. Their line of duty leaves no room for luxury or safety; it never has from the very beginning, even back when they played by Allura’s rules. Lance knows it as well as he does.

But the sentiment is still there. “I’m sorry,” Keith whispers. He leans into Lance’s palm, taking in the tears that glitter on his eyelashes. Even exhausted and half-broken, he’s brilliant to look at. “I’ll do better next time.”

Shiro huffs a tired laugh. “Don’t worry about it—not now, anyway.” He walks them over to an open, prepared cot for Keith to sit on. There’s already a tray at the bedside with juice and some sort of blue food goo. “Sit. Eat.”

His stomach aches painfully at the sight of food but he doesn’t argue. The juice, at least, is a blessing on his abused throat; he slurps it down as fast as he can and nearly coughs it up on contact. Lance thumps his back, having crawled onto the bed with him. He watches like a hawk as Keith makes his way through the meal.

None of them speak as he eats; the specter of death hanging over them is enough to stay all conversation. And really, what would they say?

Only when his bowl is completely clean does Keith speak again.

“What happens now?” He licks dry lips. “I don’t think we’ll be welcome back on Salyx anytime soon.”  
  
Shiro winces. “That’s..”  
  
“Nu-Altea’s handling it,” Lance jumps in. He nudges Keith to finish his juice. “Since we kinda exposed Salyx’s secret treasury, they have to come investigate. It’s out of our hands now.”  
  
“It’s just as well.” Shiro shifts to take one of Keith’s hands. “There was nothing else we could have done. We had to get you to a pod as soon as possible, before—” He swallows. _Before you died._

“I see.” He clears his throat. “Thank you.”  
  
Lance shakes his head and reaches for Keith’s other hand. His long fingers dwarf Keith’s, wrapping over his knuckles easily when he laces their hands together.

“How are you feeling now?” His gaze flickers all over Keith, taking in his haggard disposition and pink, freshly healed skin.

“Tired,” Keith admits. His eyes still burn some when he blinks and he can’t help but rub at one. “I think.. I might need to rest. Is there time?”

“Whatever you want,” Shiro says smoothly. “We’ll make time.” As if to prove his point, he toes his own shoes off and crawls all the way onto the bed. There isn’t quite enough room for them to all fit comfortably, and as a result, Keith ends up sandwiched between them both. A bony elbow juts into his ribs and he’s pretty sure he’s squishing someone’s fingers, but the heat they emanate thrums in his bones and balms him from the steady ache of a freshly-healed wound.

Lance’s arms snake around him from the back, pressing torso-to-back. With every breath he takes Keith can feel the shift of air in his lungs; every inhale is an assurance, every exhale, an affirmation. His fingers interlock over Keith’s stomach, pressing heat there.

“I love you,” he whispers into the crook of Keith’s neck. They both know his fingers tremble where they press into his navel. “God, I love you.”  
  
“I love you,” Shiro echoes, lips pressing into Keith’s air. The warmth of his breath grazes his scalp, heating it against the uncomfortable chill of the ship’s air. His metal arm presses into the curve of Keith’s hip. “I love you.”

Tears prickle at the edges of Keith’s eyes and he blinks them away.

“I love you too,” he whispers.  
  
He closes his eyes and feels everything for what it is: an opportunity to try again, to work again, to pass another day with what he cares for most in the universe. There is so much he’s lost to the universe—a mother, a father, a childhood. His wounds have opened and scabbed so many times that scarring is impossible. He will never be who he once was.

But where there is loss, there is always gain. For all that has been torn from his skin, he can still be sure to wake with them at his side—for every plan that falls to pieces, they will be his rock, steadfast in the face of an uncertain future.

_Stay with me._

Because every darkness has a light. Because every shadow has a sun.

 

_Law One: The universe always leans towards chaos._

_Law Two: Chaos always brings the universe together again._

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://poetatertot.tumblr.com/)


End file.
